Update on Soul Arrow

after GM blog I'm afraid of reduce arrow att and come back with old soul arrow just because a guy don't wanna spend his time buying arrow or need slot for his scrolls.
I had a bad opinion about the soul arrow change, but noticed how good it was.

 

The buffs to arrow attack and the soul arrow skill changes are completely separate, which is something players posting inventory screenshots as some sort of inane zinger fail to realize. The entire point of the skill is to attack without arrows.

sounds convoluted and unnecessary when the arrow stack limit can be increased

This is the best approach. The arrow stacking limit should be increased to at least 10000+ to compete with the current rate of inventory space depletion (in the case of BM hurricane)

 

The point was not just to extend the duration that a stack of arrows lasts, but to also reduce the number of arrows that need to be acquired in the first place. Or they could just keep it exactly as is but increase buff timer to 300s, that would mean less inventory space is needed and fewer arrows need to be acquired.

 

With the devs hinting they might revert the SA mechanics to pre-73.3 (this is not final yet, devs still have to test on their backend to make sure the envisioned implementation works as intended), here's something for BM to consider and be aware of, should the following mechanics be applied to future SA:

• SA revert to pre-v73.3, activation of SA will not consume arrows
• Current range of ATK bonus (and perhaps level requirement) retained for each tier of arrows, example: +10 ATK for Red Arrow
• Increase max numbers of arrow per stack for higher tier arrows

How I see these affect the players when compared to pre-v73.3 times:

• Players who purely use SA for no arrows consumption playstyle, maintain status quo and not affected in anyway. However the ATK buff might entice some players to consider using the arrows.
  
• Players who have been heavily using arrows, increase of max arrows per stack will allow them to enjoy an improved QoL on inventory management and of course that juicy +10.
• From my view point, it will be a change that benefits arrow users and leave SA untouched. Which I think will be a good compromise considering how the feedback goes in the past month. Also possibly relieve MM players from the dilemma whether to use SA or not, as there's a clear cut difference now.

For those who have adjusted to the current patch, some points to consider when it comes to arrows:

• Devs has hint the future "arrow consumption per stack" might not last as long as current patch (for context: ~30 minutes per stack for current patch, which is equivalent to 15,000 arrows for BM in full Hurricane mode). How much the difference in uptime duration per stack depends on the devs decision on max arrows per stack.
  
• Arrows costs will not be as cheap as what the current patch enjoys (though should still be very much affordable), assuming the shop price will remain the same.

​

When giving feedback, consider some of the points above and let the devs know how you personally feel about it. Keep in mind the hinted changes from devs are not final, yet. As usual, be respectful to other players with different opinions and try to give constructive kind of comments/suggestions.

*How will this affect FeiLongHuang character?
Nothing game breaking, so will just adjust accordingly should the changes come

 

Oh wow I have not checked up on forums for a while and I must say this discussion is still very much active.

I come online for like 5-10mins to see how my in game friends are doing irl once in a while and glad to see everyone still doing good. And gacha of course.

Back to the thread discussion, I would like to emphasize my point once more if it has not been clear enough that the whole reason I posted this thread was to question why the update had to change the identity of the skill that has been unchanged since the beginning. Because If I remember correctly I had a conversation with @Matt somewhere in this thread on whether it was necessary to do so in the first place. And if that was absolute, what was the thought process and reasoning behind such a change, especially since the main purpose of the update was to revive the dead bm population to put it in a competitive place compared to other classes. I am sure there were many ways to implement a flat 6 bonus ATT if they wanted to without touching the identities of any skill.

Sure enough, he mentioned that there was discussion on whether they should even touch the skill at all and ultimately decided on doing so. Perhaps the Staff decided that there had to be some drawback [checks and balances (?)] with every buff given to a class. Fair play. However, he did also state that they could look into not changing the skill at all and instead, correct me if my memory fails me, to give the buff in another form. I might be wrong on this because it was quite a while back but the essence is basically not what the new update entails. So my frustration stemmed from the fact that they had to "fix" something that was not broken and arguably made it controversially "bad" for casual players.


The point of me not having enough inventory space was just an inconvenience on my end which I thought would be hilarious to put in the post. Afterall, who doesnt enjoy a little banter every now and then. The main grievance I had with the soul arrow update was that I had to carry arrows from now on, even when I do not go bossing anymore and I just want to shoot snails or wild boars, get maple weapons to drop in fm for low levels to pick up or to just spam hurricane in fm with my afking friends. The fact that the Staff reduced the Soul Arrow buff duration from 10 minutes to just 3 mins 20secs made it laughable for me as well considering how many buffs BMs already have to use (bow booster, hamstring, sharp eyes, focus, phoenix summon, not to mention maple warrior when the party gets dispelled during horntail and the bs is usually at the bottom, its usually the bm that rebuffs mw instead of the attackers) coupled with the constant knockbacks during bossing or the need to summon/re-summon puppet during cwk, I was convinced the Staff wanted to nerf BMs rather than buff them. As a player who decided to pick bowmaster instead of any other class (NL mostly) when I joined this server, not having to carry arrows was one of the factors I weighed on before ultimately picking to play BM. However, I digress as no matter how I put it, its really not that big of an issue if I just stay in fm the entire time. Sure I will lose out on a lot of my "fun" but its become considerably clear to me that Royals do not consider that as a priority in their thought process when brainstorming new patches. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but the utmost respect for the developers and Staff/GM/Moderators but recent decisions and patches brought me to the conclusion that things could have been done better by simply asking the server population on their opinions before making the change.

I am not a developer and I am definitely not someone competent enough to run a MMORPG which is why I reluctantly write this with a huge pinch/grain/barrel of salt. Yet, the reason I decided to write this is because I feel it must be said.

Looking back at the poll that someone graciously made the effort to get the ball rolling, I was a bit disheartened because I knew that the results were not reflective or rather accurately represented since the people who, like me, had an issue with the update, did not come on for a while and did not even bother to cast our vote. Nevertheless, such is life and we have no one else but ourselves to blame for throwing in the towel that early. Still, it is clear that the opinions of the population were almost 50-50 even without the votes of the people who left. I can see why the Staff decided to revisit this update in the end.

Despite the narrow margin of differences in votes, I believe that the GMs/Staff must have had some form of inclination to revisit this update because if it was as "well-welcomed" as people portray it to be, what's the problem right? This then brings me back to my early paragraph of the Staff not considering "our fun" as their priorities. I think this is a very good example to show that they do listen to our concerns and GMs do put it upon themselves to better the server despite it being free labour. For that, I applaud you and I take back everything bad that I could have said about you all. (I called Gert short once to join in the fun and I also called Dave & Sen nerds. I also called Matt a noob in front of him at deep sea gorge for not giving me the hydration flask before it was officially released)

To all the people who were not able to accurately grasp the reasoning behind the origin of this post and only came to make memes on my inventory space and not wanting to hold arrows, I thoroughly enjoyed some of them and they gave me countless chuckles in the office during work time which made my day go by a little faster. There is no question that there was some truth to it albeit them not being related to the crux of the problem at all. However I hope this post brings some light onto what was going on from the "before this post was made" to "where we are now". I am glad to see that the Staff are realizing that this server is not just a "job" to us and many of us use this as a platform to destress and unwind from our real world issues and that not everything is based solely on "min-maxing".

Last but not least, I like to reiterate that the skill Soul Arrow, to me at least, has never once required the consumption of arrows and its identity speaks for itself. The ideology behind it is to attack without arrows. Its simple but I guess difficult to understand for many. I am happy that GMs are not part of that category.

I thank you all if you managed to endure the suffering I've just put you through above, but I will continue to critique every update the GMs/Staff put in place and I will be as blunt as possible because I believe Staff are humans too and a different perspective from a player pov would be healthy in future discussions.

No matter how the GMs decide to revert the skill, I think this server is in good hands. fkdrms (I know Sen just give me this one)

 

I think it's weird to see some folks are still adamant about never ever using arrows

If you are casually farming Snails for 30 minutes, go buy 1 set from the map 1 portal over for 2k mesos
If you are hanging out in the FM and spamming arrow rain for 30 minutes straight, buy 1 set from the map 1 portal over for 2k mesos
Is it too expensive? Too hard? Too far? Just admit it

The only use case for BM to continue whining about not having infinite arrows all the time is if you're afk on a certain map holding down hurricane


MM on the other hand, dang , I do think they got the short end of the stick. Arrow consumption was balanced around BM fire rate even though MM is significantly slower.
If SA has to behave the same across BM and MM, a reduction in arrow consumption would be more fair.

 

Make a feedback thread after GMs revert the skill if you are so adamant on casual players having to suffer the same inconvenience as min-maxing bms. Im not the one making the decisions.

Also, it seems that you did not get the point of my reply, or any replies of this post tbh. I was merely stating the thought process of "before the post was made" to "right now".

I hope you understand that just because you are okay with said inconvenience and found ways to get around it does not mean other people are too. This thread was made to ensure both casual bms and minmax bms have a compromise from the patch.

If you have any heart burning concerns regarding bms and why it is a must for them to carry arrows, feel free to make a thread. I'll even bump it up for you.

 

I don't think anyone is complaining about the new soul arrow ability

I thought I did not consume Crossarrows

I ran out of arrows to kill a level 105 boss (I had approximately 4000 Crossarrow diamond and
it only lasted 5 minutes)

I came back with more Crossarrows

the boss was gone

I got sad

I think there will be no more discussions about this skill

 

I guess you mean Griffey/Manon boss?
Royals devs has planned to revert to original mechanics for Soul Arrow, so hang in there.

Until then, don't spam your Soul Arrow skill, each click is 200 arrows burnt. If done properly (without being dispelled) 4000 arrows should last you 1 hour.
If you're having issue with dispels, utilize your puppet and stay at range.

 

I am an archer main who plays this server to experience nostalgic BM/MM experience from old school Maplestory. There is nothing nostalgic about changing a core archer class skill to something that now requires many extra steps to get use to (buying arrows, freeing up inventory space, care in choosing which arrows to consume, watching soul arrow duration, delicate use of quivers in long boss runs, parking a dummy character at specific towns to buy certain arrows, bringing an arrow mule to Horntail - I am not kidding).

I haven't played my BM/MM since the change (other than to provide friends with SE during boss runs). My BM ran out of arrows during Krex and Horntail (thankfully brought an arrow mule). My friends are not that strong, we play to have fun, our boss runs take longer than average. Longer boss runs = I need to carry more arrows or bring an arrow mule.

This led to me to take a break from the game for a few months since I mostly player archer.

I agree with the points made by those who protest against this change in the first 12 pages of the thread.

What annoys me is that, this was a change no one in the BM/MM community asked for. It was another change without consultation with the community. This change is much like the nerf to thief's AVOID and similar to the hiked prices for recharging NL's stars.

Now I feel the anger, disappointment, and frustration expressed by thief-mains when their AVOID got nerfed and when NL star recharge prices increased.

Not all of us are "hardcore Min/Max damage over all else" players. It is ironic for a server that advertises itself as a nostalgic Maplestory experience to make changes to the fundamental designs of an old game that runs counter to its brand.

I kindly ask the staff here to revert this change back to the way it was before - from vanilla old school Maplestory.

 

It has been decided that this change will be reverted.

I spoke to Matt in game myself and he said the only reason it has not been reverted yet was due to irl commitments of the Devs/Staff and this change will be done as soon as possible.

It is clear that there has been a lot of players who hated this change and since no one spoke about it I decided to thus the making of this thread.

I dont know how anyone can still say with a straight face everyone is happy with the SA update considering all the comments in this thread.

I hope you continue to play BM because the server needs BM mains like you and me.

Thank you for voicing out what matters to you

 

its gonna get reverted so no

 

I can't wait for the [buff/nerf] to be reverted. I stopped playing Maple Royals until then.

I keep voting, but I only connect to the game everytime I get ~90k NX, I get my gachas, then I disconnect. Atleast, I'll still get money without playing, but I miss my BM.

 

Having played with the change for a couple of month now, I can say that I like aspects of the change and I'm happy with the change overall. I LOVE the damage boost, and tradeoff of the arrow carrying/usage is a minor inconvenience for me that I would take any day.
However, as other commenters have mentioned, the ideal solution is to keep SA as it is (as it was before the update), and simply buff the arrow stats, to give the player the choice of whether to carry arrows for nostalgic and quality of life reasons.

 

this boss is very farmed due to the drop of 5000 nx

He farmed it on each channel but other users always got ahead and they killed him very quickly

for my part it took me 15 minutes to kill him

then with the update

SA nerf

IM CROSSBOWMAN NO BOWMAN

 

With the revert, you will have more arrow capacity so you will less likely run out of arrows.

Even if you did, you can just Soul Arrow which would not consume any arrows. This way you will be able to finish your boss without having someone else kill it when you are gone buying more arrows

 

Just to re-support a previously discussed idea. I think the way to go is retain soul arrow as it was before, keep the arrow buff, and increase arrow stack size (if possible within the code).

 

Since Matt has confirmed that this SA update will be reverted, could the forum moderator kindly move this to accepted feedback or just close this thread.

Thank you.

@Sen @Dave Deviluke

 

Could you kindly close the thread then? And move it to accepted feedback after change has been implemented.